This is an extract from a mail I sent to a contact a while ago, it is relevant to this thread.
?Some years ago the day before I was due to get my very first company car I was driving my 205GTI southbound on the A38. Speed was about 65 in lane 2, I had just overtaken another vehicle and was planning a return to lane 1 to make room for the National Express coach gradually catching me up about 100m behind.
I presume the coach driver got a good view of the overall scenario as a swan flew at low level across the northbound carriageway and had not really got enough speed or altitude when it arrived at the crash barrier. The first I saw of the swan was as it pulled up into a stall attitude to gain a few inches, just enough to pop it over the barrier and into the screen in front of me.
Fortunately the screen pillar took some of the force, but the windscreen bowed in trapping my hands between it and the wheel. The inside of the car filled with a shower of fine glass particles, but fortunately the swan, by now extremely dead, stayed outside.
The stretch of road is straight so I kept as constant a speed and direction as I could, looked in the mirror to see a mixture of feathers and tyre smoke from coach and the other car. Anyway I managed to free my hands enough to steer a little, and by leaning right over onto the passenger side could see enough to slow down and get the car off the road and into a bus stop lay by.
So there I was, after a huge moment, blood dripping everywhere from hands and a few minor face cuts, and did anyone stop to help? That?s when I lost some faith in human nature.?
Thinking about this some more I realise that, as Darcy said, there is an automatic reaction to duck and I also guess this was a rather close call. Hate to think what would have happened if the screen had failed completely and I had ended up with one seriously upset swan sitting on my knee.
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>automatic reaction to duck...
??
David
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I thought you said it was a swan? :)
But seriously, it seems that bird strikes are a hit-and-miss affair (if you'll excuse the pun), depending on where and with what they hit the screen.
I've whacked big pigeons, which just seem to bounce off, but have had a sparrow crack the glass.
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Blimey Ian, that's a spooky connection over the world at the same time.
David
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No Fowl play suspected, David!
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Almost as stupid as a Roo or Wallaby are the emu......long spindly legs which crumple leaving a larger than swan sized
body coming through the windscreen.
Other Oz road hazards....parrots and cockatoos feeding on grain spilt on the road at harvest time...take off straight into the car and even more scary....four wedge tailed eagles gorging on
roadkill attempting to fly away when approached but unable to gain height due to excess weight.
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Reminds me of when I was visiting a company that makes railway engines (on business OK? Not in my own time!)
In the testing bay they had a machine that fired (dead) chickens at the front of the train to test the strength of the glass. I wonder if windscreen manufacturers do the same?
Company lore had it that one day the factory cat got into the barrel of the chicken gun...not sure if that was true or if that's what they say to all the girls.
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R,
similar story. The Israeli air force have a "gun" which they use to check aircraft canopies. Birdstrikes are a big problem, as all migrating birds seem to overfly Israel.
There is an apocryphal story about another air force (always a different one!) borrowing the idea, and experienceing problems.
The israeli's were asked to comment, and replied "Defrost the chicken first".
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